BETTER THAN WOOD

We received an estimate from Keith during a home visit on April 8, 2014 for a paver patio that encircled an existing waterfall, a walkway that tied into an existing slate walkway along the side of the house, and a retaining wall above the walkway. I went to their office the next day to sign the contract and found out they gave 3.5% discount for cash (woo hoo!). They promised to send an image depicting the work they planned that would go with the contract, but I never received one. I sent them a photo of the existing area with our ideas, but there was no following correspondence on the plan. I was told they would order the materials and have the job completed by May 20. After I contacted them to see if they were still on schedule, they arrived about a week before May 20th and were professional and hardworking. The site supervisor was along the first morning to go over the work. After they completed the patio, they were filling in the outside edge with red rock, which seemed to drop off more than an easy walk. We told them they disturbed the drainage system previously installed and gave them drains to bury under the rock. Keith returned for a visit and said that burying the drains would be an additional $300. May 16th was a stormy day and some of the slate area washed out because of the way they left it on May 15th. I addressed it with the workers but they didn?t address it. They completed the patio, walkway, and wall on May 21 (43rd day). The patio, walkway and wall really look incredibly awesome and we were very pleased with them. However, the surrounding areas were greatly disturbed and not in the original condition. The new drains were covered with dirt, making them inoperable. The red rock was so thin the weeds were beginning to grow. The cloths were tangled and mixed with rock and dirt in a number of places. The mulched areas were now uneven with rock and dirt. The tie-in to the existing slate was not done. The slate washout was not addressed. We called to provide details and agreed to send pictures of our concerns. No response. Since we were getting ready to go out of town for 10 days on May 29th, we called Keith, who said ?it?s fine? and ?we?ll send out the supervisor to look at it, but I?m sure it?s going to be okay?. Then we had some words and he said he didn?t like my tone. I ended up hanging up and emailing details of the conversation to Marci in their office, telling her that I didn?t want to speak to Keith anymore. She assured me that if I let her know when we returned from out of town, she would get someone out to look. We notified her on June 10th, but it wasn?t until Jun 26th that anyone came to see our concerns. Of course, we couldn?t do any other work while we waited for them?. On July 3rd (an additional 43 days from patio completion), workers came, and with my husband?s help and large tip, they fixed the drainage area. They promised to come back the next week to clean up the uneven previously mulched area and the slate wash out and tie-in. We then asked for an estimate to take remove the slate walkway and continue the pavers, and if accepted, we wouldn?t need them to do the tie-in. We didn?t hear from them, so we cleaned the previously mulched area ourselves and contacted them on Jul 12th. Three days later we received the estimate, but the width was not what we requested and we were pretty fed up by then and told them we didn?t accept the estimate to come out and finish the tie-in, which they did on July 21st, two days after we received the final invoice. We are happy with the patio and walkway and retaining wall, but the bottom line is that there was a lot of frustration involved and required us to follow up more than we ever expected to have to follow up with a someone we hire to do a job ? isn?t that why they have managers and supervisors? The frustrations left us with some bad feelings. We?re glad they made good on our concerns, but it took a lot out of us to make it happen, lowering the professionalism, punctuality, and responsiveness ratings. The patio and walkway are really nicely done ? completely level and no drainage issues when it rains. But the work on the surrounding areas lowers the quality rating.

Better Than Wood built a 12' x 26' composite deck onto my house in 2008. Just six years old, parts of the wood base underneath the deck is rotting. I suspect the problem is that those particular pieces of wood are placed in such a way that they block the water from flowing out and so the trapped water stays on the wood and causes it to rot. I contacted Better Than Wood so that they could come out and take a look at it. After some time went by and I hadn't heard from them, I called the office. The receptionist told me that they had been out to look at the deck and they didn't think it was a problem. However, no deck expert ever contacted me with any information. I scheduled an appointment to have someone come out and give me an estimate for repairs. A salesman came out on July 18, 2014 and told me I'd hear back from him the following week. I never heard from him.